The moisture vaporator was whirring again. That incessant, grating hum was just one more thing on the endless list keeping Brandyn awake. At least it was a problem he could fix in the morning. For now, he tried to lean into it, letting the rhythm coax a reluctant sleep from its hiding place.
He shifted inside his cot, opening his natural eye to scan the cramped mud-printed cabin. He'd learned the hard way that his cybernetic eye shone too bright in the dark. The glare would wake the baby.
Gianna was another reason for his exhaustion. He adored her, but the girl just wasn't acclimatising to the scrublands. The arid heat was a brutal shock after the temperate, damp climate of her native Naboo. Even the underground bunker she'd been in had a coolness to it. But this place — this barren wasteland of a hellhole — trapped a heavy, suffocating dryness that didn't lift even at midnight.
Blaming the weather was just a gentle lie he told himself to ignore why she would really cry.
Thirst was another thief of sleep. Brandyn's lips were close to splitting and bleeding. Every drop of water he could spare went into Gianna's bottle. The other occupant of the room didn't require moisture. Despite the vaporator's constant churning, the yield was pathetic. His help had assured him the local water table was promising, but Brandyn's doubts ran deeper than the last dry bore.
The previous owners hadn't relied on atmospheric vaporators out here because they were too lazy to dig.
Another reason he lay frozen, staring into the gloom where a sliver of waning moonlight cut through the window, was Ariadne.
He knew the assassin droid had been reprogrammed. He'd patched her code himself. He knew, logically, that her primary parameters were now set to protect them. But logic did little to quiet the screaming in his instincts.
A man did not willingly invite the monster that slaughtered his parents into the same room as his child.
The human-replica droid was perfectly still. Eerily so. Powered down and tethered to the dying Gonk unit in the corner, Ariadne siphoned what little voltage the battery had left.
When morning came, it would bring an inevitable, suffocating choice. The Gonk was nearly depleted. He would have to haul the heavy power droid into the nearest settlement to find a fast-charging station. The trek would take five grueling hours. Because Ariadne didn't have the juice to make the trip, Brandyn would have to go alone. But this brought a different kind of torture. He couldn't drag an infant through five hours of scorching scrubland.
He would have to leave Gianna behind. With the droid.
Yet, as terrifying as his waking reality was, Brandyn preferred it to where his mind drifted when he closed his eyes. The remnants of his last nightmare still clung to his consciousness, a heavy visual shroud that refused to dissolve. Of all the things tearing at his peace, this singular memory was the cruelest thief of sleep.
"...Bran…?"
Cybelle's voice echoed through the cluttered cabin. Her ghost was permanently seared into his subconscious. The memory of her — bleeding, dying, resulting from the blinding rage and confusion that had driven him to commit such atrocities — pulsed behind his eyelids.
He looked from the dark silhouette of his parents' killer to the crib of his daughter, and realized he might never sleep again.
